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Further Information

Latest News from the Record Office

Find out what's going on at the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland.

Record Office Stock Take 2014

Regular visitors will know that every year we close in October for what we call ‘stocktaking week’. This year is slightly unusual in that we shall be closed for two weeks from Saturday 27th September to Saturday 11th October inclusive.

What do we do?

Well, we do take stock – we hunt down missing documents, put our microfiche in order and carry out all those many tasks which a year’s business with our researchers generate.

However, there is much more to our closure than a simple stock-taking. To have the building to ourselves means that we can give the place a thorough clean. Our carpets are shampooed and our microfilm readers are cleaned and polished to remove a year’s accumulated grime.

The absence of you, our public, also enables us to deploy every member of staff to tasks behind the scenes. So stock-taking week is the time when we move those huge archive collections from one store to another, when we re-box or re-package old deposits, and when newly arrived material is appraised, sorted and catalogued. It is a time when many hands really do make light work.

The fact that we can assemble everyone in one place (without the need to cater for visitors) also gives us our once-a-year chance to meet, plan, and train together. This year we have a new computerized cataloguing system to get to grips with as well as a refresher in the implications of the information legislation which binds us as much as it does you.

Why are we closing for an additional week?

In part this is because we now have additional storage at our out-store on the County Hall site. This year we have received unprecedented quantities of new records as a result of the relocation of City Council offices in Leicester. There include a superb collection of photographs of city streets from the 1950s to the 1980s. Our additional closure will enable us to make these available from 13th October.

At Long Street we have also neglected many back-room functions in order to maintain our high level of front-line service. This closure is our chance to catch up. New accessions will be processed, large new deposits boxed and shelved, and many crates of local studies material received from county libraries sorted.

The extended closure is not ideal but we can guarantee that we shall reopen cleaner, brighter and better able to deal with your research needs.

Telephone calls and written enquiries

If you would like to request information from us during this time you are still welcome to do so in writing or via email (recordoffice@leics.gov.uk). Telephone calls will be answered although there may be delays as staff will be working in different parts of the building. We will not be able to answer enquiries over the phone but can deal with requests for information about our services.

The Record Office Mobilizes! - Open Day Saturday 28th June

On Saturday 28th June the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland will be holding an open day to commemorate the event that triggered the start of World War One: the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo exactly 100 years earlier.

In addition to the launch of a new exhibition recalling the events of 1914, there will be talks, displays of original archives, contemporary music, and an opportunity to ‘join up’ for the local; Defence League. The highlight will be a dramatic reconstruction of the assassination itself, showing how events unfolded exactly one hundred years before.

The day also aims to find volunteers to tell their own family stories of the war as part of Leicestershire County Council’s Heritage Lottery funded project A Century of Stories.

Councillor Richard Blunt, Lead Member for Heritage, Leisure and Arts said: “we hope many people will attend the open day and find out more about Leicestershire’s role in the early months of the war. We want people to come forward and share their own histories more widely to help everyone who now lives in the county to find their own personal connection to the momentous events one hundred years ago.”

The Record Office is based on Long Street in Wigston Magna and will be open from 10-3 on Saturday 28th June. The Open Day is free, but there may be a small charge for some activities.

Explore Your Archive

Explore Your Archive is a national campaign aimed at all archive services throughout the UK and Ireland. The key message is to raise public awareness of the essential role and value of archives to society as a whole and to demonstrate the impact they can have on individual lives